News from Sydney Peace Prize Laureates Archives - Sydney Peace Foundation

Sydney Peace Prize Recognises International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement

Sydney Peace Foundation — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 06:21:20 +0000

The 2024 Sydney Peace Prize will be awarded to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement at the Sydney Town Hall on 18 November 2024.

Jagan Chapagain, Secretary General of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) will be in Sydney to accept Australia’s international prize for peace, which recognises leading global voices who advocate for peace, for justice and for our common humanity.

As we commemorate the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Geneva Conventions, we face unprecedented challenges to International Humanitarian Law. It’s in this context that the 2024 Sydney Peace Prize honours a remarkable movement of over 16 million people. The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement are recognised for its advocacy for peace, for its work saving lives and preventing the suffering of people affected by armed conflict, and for its commitment to International Humanitarian Law.

Jagan Chapagain, Secretary General of the IFRC, said: “This award is a testament to the dedication of our 191 National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ staff and volunteers. Many are working in some of the most challenging and dangerous environments in the world. Their dedication reflects the fundamental principles and values that define our Movement.”

Melanie Morrison, Sydney Peace Foundation Director, said: “In a year of immense humanitarian need and suffering, this international Movement is there to support those targeted in conflicts across the globe – from Sudan to Syria, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel and Lebanon, and Ukraine, Afghanistan to Yemen. The Movement’s unwavering commitment to principles of international humanitarian law remind us that humanity must always come first.”

University of Sydney Vice-President, External Relations, Kirsten Andrews, said: “The University congratulates the Sydney Peace Foundation and City of Sydney in awarding this year’s Sydney Peace Prize to the International Red Cross and the Red Crescent Movement, in recognition of the ongoing and vital importance of their work during a time of increasing global conflict.”

“The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is saving lives every day in more than 191 countries and is a deserving recipient of the 2024 Sydney Peace Prize,” Lord Mayor Clover Moore AO, said. “This movement of more than 16 million humanitarians works in shockingly difficult and dangerous circumstances to provide a lifeline to those suffering in over 100 armed conflicts around the world.

“My congratulations and thanks to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Your courageous and critical work is inspiring and reminds us of how precious it is to live in peace.”

The Sydney Peace Prize Lecture and Award ceremony is on Monday 18 November at 6:30pm at Sydney Town Hall and the Gala Dinner is being held on Thursday 21 November at the Sheraton Grand, Hyde Park. This year the Sydney Peace Prize award funds will be directed to support the humanitarian work of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

The Sydney Peace Prize Lecture and Award ceremony is on Monday 18 November from 6:30pm to 8pm at the Sydney Town Hall. Tickets are available here.

ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS AND RED CRESCENT MOVEMENT

191 National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies together constitute a worldwide humanitarian movement. Its mission is to prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found. It’s to protect life and health and ensure respect for the human being, in particular in times of armed conflict and other emergencies. It’s also to work for the prevention of disease and for the promotion of health and social welfare, to encourage voluntary service and a constant readiness to give help by the members of the Movement, and a universal sense of solidarity towards all those in need of its protection and assistance.

The Movement is guided by the Geneva Conventions and its Fundamental Principles: Humanity, Impartiality, Neutrality, Independence, Voluntary Service, Unity and Universality.

ABOUT THE SYDNEY PEACE PRIZE

The Sydney Peace Prize is Australia’s international prize for peace, awarded by the Sydney Peace Foundation at the University of Sydney. The Prize recognises leading global voices that promote peace, justice and nonviolence. Laureates include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson, Joseph Stiglitz, Patrick Dodson, Naomi Klein, the Black Lives Matter Global Network and the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

The Foundation advocates for peace with justice – recognising that to achieve true and lasting peace, we must, beyond ending war and violent conflict, address deep injustices and structural inequality.

MEDIA ENQUIRIES:

Melanie Morrison, Director, Sydney Peace Foundation

E: melanie.morrison@sydney.edu.au

M: 0401 996 451

University of Sydney media office

E: media.office@sydney.edu.au

M: +61 2 8627 0246 (diverts to mobile)

Australian Red Cross Media

E: media@redcross.org.au

Ph: 1800 733 443

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Interview with Pat Dodson

Sydney Peace Foundation — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 01:50:14 +0000

“The truth telling is to liberate everyone. It’s to liberate us from our own sense of superiority or to liberate us from our sense of oppression… and we’ve got to deal honestly with this if we want to create a better society.”

We recently caught up with Senator Patrick Dodson who received the 2008 Sydney Peace Prize. He sat down with us to discuss the Black Lives Matter movement in Australia and the need for honesty and truth in creating a better society.

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Black Lives Matter Network: Interview with Rodney Diverlus

Sydney Peace Foundation — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 07:38:38 +0000

In 2017, the Black Lives Matter Global Network received the Sydney Peace Prize for building a powerful movement for racial equality and courageously reigniting a global conversation. We recently caught up with Rodney Diverlus who accepted the Prize in 2017 on behalf of the Black Lives Matter Network. He sat down with us to discuss the need for transformation, alternatives to traditional policing, and the importance of recognising inter-generational trauma.

Stay tuned as we continue to explore this topic through an upcoming interview on the legacy of racism and violence against First Nations People in Australia. Well over 400 Aboriginal people have died in custody in Australia since the Royal Commission into Deaths in Custody in 1991. This is unacceptable. The Sydney Peace Foundation stands with the Black Lives Matter movement in Australia and around the world. Together, we can stand as allies and in solidarity to work for justice and the pursuit of peace.

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Podcast: TARANA BURKE ON ME TOO & BUILDING A MOVEMENT FOR CHANGE

Sydney Peace Foundation — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 21:22:40 +0000

During her time in Australia to accept the 2019 Sydney Peace Prize on behalf of the Me Too movement, Tarana Burke spoke with Vogue Australia’s Clare Press about the origins of Me Too, the viral hashtag, and how work to combat sexual violence is peace work.

This interview was conducted by Clare Press and first appeared on Wardrobe Crisis.

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Joseph Stiglitz on inequality and the hurdles to great economic policy

Sydney Peace Foundation — Tue, 22 May 2018 00:09:47 +0000

2018 Sydney Peace Prize recipient Professor Joseph Stiglitz joined GetUp!’s Future To Fight For podcast for a chat about inequality, globalisation, and some of the myths that hold us back from great economic policy.

https://audioboom.com/posts/6865897-2-joseph-stiglitz

I am pleased that the issue of inequality has reached the top of the agenda. Finally the issue of social justice and the issue of economic justice is firmly on the agenda. This is not radical, this is just common sense.

Tax cuts are a race to the bottom. Public investments are at the core of a successful society and you have to have taxes to finance these. Tax cuts are the wrong way to get robust growth to the economy.

The level of engagement of our young people gives me hope. They don’t find anything radical. All over the world there is broader civic engagement, and it’s happening at all different levels. It seems to be a moment of awakening.

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Julian Burnside on the failings of super-minister Dutton

Sydney Peace Foundation — Sat, 28 Apr 2018 05:55:08 +0000

Peter Dutton is arguably the most powerful person in the country. In his new ministry he has oversight for national security, for the Federal Police, Border Force and ASIO, for the law enforcement and emergency management functions of the Attorney-General’s Department, the transport security functions of the Department of Infrastructure, Regional Development and Cities, the counterterrorism and cybersecurity functions of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the multicultural affairs functions of the Department of Social Services, and the entire Department of Immigration and Border Protection.

It is hard to imagine any member of federal parliament less suited to exercise the sort of powers now held by Dutton. It is easy to argue that no minister should be entrusted with such vast powers. But the fact that those powers are in Dutton’s hands is seriously alarming.

Ministerial powers are subject to limits. The rule of law means that the limits are subject to supervision by the judicial system. Most ministers understand that. Dutton apparently does not.

HE IS TRYING TO PERSUADE OTHER COUNTRIES TO BACK AWAY FROM INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS PROTECTION.

Ministerial decisions can be challenged in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) and, ultimately, in the courts. Challenging a ministerial decision is not simple, but the AAT is a bit more “litigant friendly” than the courts – the AAT makes challenging a ministerial decision a bit easier for people who can’t afford a lawyer.

In the middle of 2017, Dutton led an attack on the AAT, saying that it was making “silly” rulings – which, presumably, means decisions he did not like.

“Judicial processes are very important,” he said, and the legislation “still allows people to have their day in court. But it doesn’t give rise to the silly situations which we’re seeing at the moment …”

He advocated legislation that would give him the final say over citizenship decisions, subject only to the courts. He already has the final say over visa cancellations.

When Dutton took over the immigration portfolio from Scott Morrison in December 2014, he adopted Morrison’s misleading characterisation of boat people as “illegal”. Morrison had decreed that the people referred to in the Migration Act as “Unauthorised Maritime Arrivals” should in future be called “Illegal Maritime Arrivals”. Dutton has picked up the idea, even though it is a lie.

Dutton shamelessly uses the “illegal” tag.

At the very least, this shows ignorance of some basic facts; at worst, it shows dishonesty. Boat people do not commit any offence by arriving in Australia without a visa, without an invitation, seeking to be protected from persecution. On the contrary, they are exercising a right acknowledged in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Article 14 of the Universal Declaration starts this way: “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”

Australia made a significant contribution to the creation of the Universal Declaration, and it was Doc Evatt, an Australian, who presided over the General Assembly of the United Nations when it was adopted on December 10, 1948. More than half a century later, on July 27, 2017, Dutton wrote an opinion piece about Operation Sovereign Borders, which included these words:

“It’s now been three years since a people-smuggler’s boat loaded with Illegal Maritime Arrivals (IMAs) reached Australia …

“Had the Coalition not mounted OSB – the boats and illegal arrivals would still be coming.”

On October 31, 2017, he said: “The Coalition government has had a clear and consistent policy since coming to office: no one who attempts to enter Australia illegally by boat will ever settle here.”

Dutton is in charge of the offshore detention of boat people on Nauru and on Manus Island. Most of them have been assessed as refugees, legally entitled to protection. The Refugee Convention means they can’t be sent back to their country of origin, where they were being persecuted, and Dutton has made it clear that they will never be allowed to come to Australia. But Nauru and Papua New Guinea are not having much luck finding other countries to send them to. Billions of dollars are spent because Dutton is too cruel – or perhaps too ignorant – to allow them to come here. Presumably he justifies this by calling them “illegal”, which is false, and by describing the whole exercise as “border protection”, which is misleading.

Dutton told the public these refugees had received “an enormous amount of support” from Australian taxpayers for a long time, saying: “there is a very different scenario up on Nauru and Manus than people want you to believe”. Taxes cover the absurd cost of maintaining offshore processing arrangements. It costs about $570,000 per refugee per year to keep the men and women on Manus or Nauru. So in that sense, refugees receive support from taxpayers.

UN officials have repeatedly criticised Australia’s refugee policies. Our treatment of refugees on Manus breaches our obligations under the Convention Against Torture. Every international organisation that has looked at our treatment of refugees has criticised us for it.

Dutton’s moral horizons can be seen by considering several recent cases. The boat people on Nauru include children. Most of them have been there for four years or more. Some of them have been driven to self-harm or have attempted suicide. The medical facilities available on Nauru are simply not able to cope with young children who are self-harming at the age of 10 or 11 years. In recent months, several young children have been in such desperate need that applications were made in the Australian courts for the children to be brought to Australia for proper medical treatment. Dutton paid lawyers to resist those applications.

It is important to understand what this means. Dutton, who spends billions of dollars to keep innocent people in misery for years, spends more taxpayer dollars to resist attempts to get appropriate medical care for the children the minister has harmed.

He also criticises lawyers who try to help the people he is harming. In August 2017, Dutton declared that lawyers helping asylum seekers were “unAustralian”. Speaking for myself, his comment made being “unAustralian” a badge of honour.

In September 2017, referring to the first group of refugees to leave Manus Island for resettlement in the United States, Dutton said: “We have been taken for a ride, I believe, by a lot of the advocates and people within Labor and the Greens who want you to believe this is a terrible existence”.

It is difficult for Australians to get into the processing centres on Manus and Nauru. We can’t see these places for ourselves. If Dutton really thinks life for refugees on Manus or Nauru is better than “people within Labor and the Greens” say, then perhaps he will explain why refugees have been attacked and killed in those places. Perhaps he will explain why international observers have been so critical of conditions in those places. Perhaps he will explain why so many refugees in those places have suffered such serious physical and mental damage.

In October 2017, Dutton accused advocates and the Greens of “aiding and abetting” detainees to force the government to change its policy through “subterfuge”.

In November 2017, Dutton attacked New Zealand’s offer of $3 million funding to provide essential services on Manus Island, saying the money would be better spent elsewhere. He also repeatedly rejected New Zealand’s offers of resettlement for people on Manus. He attacked New Zealand, saying it benefited from Australia’s tough border policies without paying for them: “If any boats arrive tomorrow, those people aren’t going to Auckland, they’re going to … Nauru.”

Dutton also threatened that, if New Zealand and Papua New Guinea bypassed Australia to strike an agreement to resettle refugees held on Manus, it would have consequences for Australia’s relationship with both countries.

On April 7, 2018, Dutton called for “like-minded” countries to come together and review the relevance of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

So, here it is: Australia’s most powerful minister is wilfully mistreating innocent people at vast public expense. He is waging a propaganda war against refugees and against the people who try to help them. And he is trying to persuade other countries to back away from international human rights protection.

He tries to make it seem tolerable by hiding it all away in other countries, so that we can’t see the facts for ourselves.

Dutton has often expressed concern about people drowning in their attempt to get to Australia. But his concern about people drowning is a lie. If he were genuinely concerned about people drowning, he might treat survivors decently. Instead, if they don’t drown, he punishes them: he puts them in offshore detention for years. He does this in order to deter others from trying to seek safety in Australia.

Perhaps the most worrying thing about Dutton is not his dishonesty, but his propaganda war, which already has led the Australian people to accept things that would have been unthinkable even 10 or 20 years ago. He has blinded us to the fact that we are now deliberately harming innocent men, women and children, in ways that are completely inconsistent with our view of ourselves. After all, aren’t we the nation that believes in a fair go for everyone?

By small degrees Dutton is inducing Australians to tolerate the intolerable. His campaign to make cruelty acceptable has the potential to lead Australia to very dark places. Invested in him is great power to do so, more power than any minister has had before.

This article was written by Julian Burnside AO QC, and was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on Apr 28, 2018.

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Julian Burnside: Everyday heroes compelled to break the law when government fails to protect us

Sydney Peace Foundation — Sun, 25 Mar 2018 06:50:19 +0000

This article is written by 2014 Sydney Peace Prize recipient Julian Burnside AO QC. It appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald of 25 March 2018.

What does it say about the state of our democracy when it falls upon everyday people to stop a billionaire building the largest coal mine in the southern hemisphere?

And what does it say about our politicians that they will let Adani’s mine proceed when the vast majority of Australians don’t want it, and scientists are urging us to keep coal in the ground to avoid more dangerous climate change?

This month, nine people – many of them first-time offenders – were collectively fined more than $70,000 for their efforts in January to keep Adani’s coal in the ground.

They were each fined $8000 for their peaceful action at the Abbot Point coal terminal. These are extraordinarily high fines for civil disobedience actions.

While Adani fights a $12,000 fine for environmental pollution- small change for them – ordinary people have been hit with fines that could stop them putting food on the table, paying school fees and keeping up their rent or mortgage repayments.

Their actions stand in marked contrast with Adani’s, which released coal-contaminated water right next to the Great Barrier Reef and then, when it was fined, chose to appeal “on principle”.

Many companies have polluted our environment, and have suffered very little consequence.

In 2014, Santos was fined $1500 by the Environmental Protection Agency for a coal seam gas leak. The leak polluted an aquifer with lead, arsenic, and uranium.

In 2016, AGL Energy released 6000 litres of sulphuric acid into stormwater drains next to their Bayswater power station. They were fined $30,000.

The nine peaceful protestors who took action at Abbot Point all pleaded guilty. They acted out of conscience. One of them, a mother of two, said: “I won’t stand by while my children’s future is put at risk.”

Civil disobedience and protest are vital in a democracy. They open up political space for communities to intervene when the doors of governments are closed to them, and the price of entry to corporate boardrooms and political party fundraisers is beyond reach.

As Martin Luther King said: “One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”

History is full of examples of principled law-breaking. The suffragette movement in the early 20th Century involved women breaking the law to draw attention to an obvious injustice: that women were not allowed to vote.

The impact of climate change is apparent across the world. We see it in the worst droughts in history; and we see it as our Pacific neighbours fight to protect cultural land from sea level rise. And half the corals in the Great Barrier Reef are dead.

Yet our national political debate focuses on scandal; our leaders toss lumps of coal around in parliament. The battle for our future barely rates a mention, let alone serious debate in parliament. Our lawmakers are failing us when ordinary people are compelled to break the law to protect us from disasters like Adani’s mine.

As companies like Adani fight petty fines, these ordinary people are fighting for our future in cities and towns across Australia.

They are the unsung heroes of our democracy: standing up for the future of all Australians where our political leaders will not. They deserve respect, not punishment.

When we look back on this period of our history, these are the people to whom we will give thanks for having the courage to fight for justice, even when that required them to break the law.

Julian Burnside QC is a barrister and human rights, refugee and climate change advocate.

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Naomi Klein: How shocking events can spark positive change

Sydney Peace Foundation — Sat, 24 Feb 2018 06:50:50 +0000

This talk was presented by 2016 Sydney Peace Prize Laureate Naomi Klein, at an official TED conference in September 2017.

Things are pretty shocking out there right now — record-breaking storms, deadly terror attacks, thousands of migrants disappearing beneath the waves and openly supremacist movements rising. Are we responding with the urgency that these overlapping crises demand from us?

Journalist and activist Naomi Klein studies how governments use large-scale shocks to push societies backward. She shares a few propositions from “The Leap” — a manifesto she wrote alongside indigenous elders, climate change activists, union leaders and others from different backgrounds — which envisions a world after we’ve already made the transition to a clean economy and a much fairer society.

“The shocking events that fill us with dread today can transform us, and they can transform the world for the better,” Klein says. “But first we need to picture the world that we’re fighting for. And we have to dream it up together.”

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Black Lives Matter is a revolutionary peace movement

Sydney Peace Foundation — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 08:10:39 +0000

This article is written by Melina Abdullah, #BLM Organizer and Professor and Chair of Pan-African Studies, California State University, Los Angeles. It is the first in the Black Lives Matter Everywhere series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the Sydney Democracy Network and the Sydney Peace Foundation. To mark the awarding of the 2017 Sydney Peace Prize to the Black Lives Matter Global Network, the authors reflect on the roots of and responses to a movement that has reignited a global conversation about racism. The 2017 Sydney Peace Prize will be presented on November 2 (tickets here).

Black Lives Matter is working for a world where Black lives are no longer intentionally and systematically targeted for demise.
– Black Lives Matter mission statement

On July 13, 2013, hundreds of thousands of people – mostly Black people – flooded the streets of US cities following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watch volunteer who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

For weeks, we had been glued to our televisions as police and “friends” of Zimmerman tried to disparage the high schooler – to make the victim some kind of predator. But we had seen his face. We saw his eyes dance, his brown skin glisten, and his smile warm hearts. He was a child, a lovely, beautiful boy-child who looked like our own children. And Zimmerman had no right to steal his life, regardless of what a court says.

In 2012 Trayvon Martin was shot for ‘looking suspicious’. He was 17. Michael Fleshman/flickr, CC BY-SA

So, the verdict came down, and we erupted. Our spirits filled with the righteous indignation of generations past. Transgenerational memories came rushing back of Emmett Till.

Trayvon was born to Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, but he was ours – all of ours.

Black bodies filled the streets, disrupting traffic, inhibiting White shoppers and making the normalcy of White American middle-class existence less certain.

As our ranks swelled and our presence became more intentionally targeted at White epicentres of escapism (including tourist attractions like Hollywood and Highland), we began to understand the power of disruption. In disrupting these spaces, we refused to allow our collective pain to be confined to Black communities. Others may not see their own children in the face of Trayvon, but they would not be permitted to dismiss us.

On the third day of protest, in the midst of our first freeway shutdown, a text message found its way to a few of us. It read like words from the Underground Railroad: “Meet at St. Elmo Village at 9pm” (a Black artist community in mid-city Los Angeles).

The message was from Patrisse Cullors, a young, powerful, emerging organiser in Black Los Angeles whose work had centred on ending sheriffs’ violence. Her text was passed onto other organisers by Thandisizwe Chimurenga, a Black independent journalist who had been most recently active in the struggle for justice for Oscar Grant.

As the summer night settled in and demonstrators scurried from highways, dodging the police who came in with sticks, beanbag guns and tear gas, the mamas collected our young children, walked home and prepared to go back out that same night.

A movement, not a moment

I was late to the meeting. By the time I arrived, a few dozen folks, including about ten of my spirit-children/students were closing out discussions of what it means to build “a movement, not a moment”.

Many of us had been involved in what Brenda Stevenson terms “episodic organising”, or demands for justice that are limited to a person or a moment in time. But what we came to embrace that night is that the murder of Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant before him, Devin Brown before him, Tyisha Miller before him, Margaret Mitchell before her … and so many others, was not accidental.

Perhaps the names and specifics of each case unfolded independently, but the system of American policing was designed to produce these outcomes. The system is brutal, murderous and violent. Only by transforming the way that we vision justice can we realise peace.

So, we committed to building a new peace movement – one that was driven by the way that Trayvon had embedded his spirit in our collective souls and opened itself to the chorus of voices whose bodies had been stolen by the state before and after him.

All of this intuitive work had already happened prior to our gathering in the courtyard, and remains hugely important to the building of this movement. For a movement to grow, it must be organic, flowing from the hearts of the people.

Every transformative struggle for justice has been rooted in heart work. Attempts to insert causes into communities ring as false and ultimately fall flat.

The work of organisers, with the most effective organisers being part of the communities that they seek to organise, is to tap in to the souls of the community, hear the collective outcries and distil the issues and cast them in the context of a larger vision. They work to harness the energy as the movement builds and seize the time as communities make demands and arrive at solutions.

Civil rights, Black Power and Black Lives Matter organiser Greg Akili says that organising is “getting people to move on their own behalf and in their own interest”.

As the intuitive work was happening in the streets, Patrisse was assembling with Alicia Garzaand Opal Tometi to organise us, visioning beyond the moment and strategising how to build a new iteration of Black freedom struggle.

No justice, no peace

Our mission emerged organically. It was summed up in the words penned by Alicia: “Black lives matter”. We have a right to our lives. Our children have a right to live and walk freely, without being hunted by the state, agents of the state, or wannabe agents of the state.

This is not debatable. There are no two ways to see it. This is one of those very basic, fundamental truths.

Getting to freedom and getting to justice, however, is a much more challenging charge. We are heirs of struggles that are also black-and-white: calls to end chattel slavery and lynching, demands for basic civil rights and voting rights, and the constant call for the end to police brutality.

While a hawk’s-eye view of these demands offers very obvious conclusions, the complication becomes the entrenchment of systems that produce unjust outcomes.

In How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America, Manning Marable offers that “the system exists not to develop, but to underdevelop Black people”, with each advancement for White society coming at the expense of Black freedom.

So, while there are clearly just outcomes, like ending slavery and lynching, ushering in civil rights and voting rights, ending police brutality and now demanding an end to state-sanctioned violence against Black people, such demands require a fundamental transformation of a system that preys on and benefits from Black suffering.

Recurrences of state-sanctioned violence against Black people are not accidental. Annette Bernhardt/flickr, CC BY-NC

While Black freedom movements, including Black Lives Matter, are clearly working for what is just, the disruption that they pose to current systems is often cast by that system as problematic, even violent.

Because systems are designed to protect themselves, they utilise their vast powers to contort the messages of those who seek to challenge them. They use the laws that they created, the media that they control and the social structures that they erected to present those who challenge them as essentially “enemy combatants”.

Examples of this date back to the hefty bounty put on the head of Harriet Tubman, the bombing of the office of Ida B. Wells, the 40 times that Martin Luther King was imprisoned, the assassinations of King and Malcolm X and the targeting, imprisonment and exile of members of the Black Panther Party, including Huey P. Newton and Assata Shakur. Today, Black Lives Matter organisers and other Black freedom fighters are the new targets.

The call for Black lives to matter and for an end to state-sanctioned violence against Black people (and by extension all people) is fundamentally a call for peace. And peace must not be confused with the momentary quiet of submission. The kind of peace sought by Black Lives Matter results from justice.

Peace cannot be compelled or forced. It is earned when the people benefit from and see themselves as a part of the societies in which they are housed. Peace is not a tactic of struggle, it is an outcome.

As we struggle for a world where Black lives are no longer intentionally and systematically targeted for demise, it means that the systems that prey on us must be not simply reformed but re-imagined and transformed.

Peace calls for an end to incarceration and criminalisation in favour of real public safety solutions. Peace calls for the meeting of basic human needs, including safe housing, clean water, healthy food, and medical care. Peace calls for quality education as a universal right and the ability to engage fully in the arts, culture and spirituality.

Peace requires revolutionary vision – and Black Lives Matter is a peace movement.

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10 things you should know about Black Lives Matter

Sydney Peace Foundation — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 03:35:26 +0000

The Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLM) will be awarded the 2017 Sydney Peace Prize in November. The Movement for Black Lives, of which BLM is part, has galvanised the globe from California to London to Australia, and #BlackLivesMatter has proven to be a rallying cry for a new chapter in the long Black Freedom struggle. But how much do you really know about this important movement? Here are 10 things you should know about its origins, leaders, and purpose.

1. BLM IS ABOUT LOVE

Black Lives Matter started with a love letter.

In 2012, 17-year-old , unarmed Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch who felt Travyon, walking home after buying a pack of Skittles at a nearby service station, was ‘out of place’ in the middle-class area. Zimmerman was acquitted for all charges.

Alicia Garza retells the experience: “Trayvon could have been my brother. I immediately felt not only enraged, but a deep sense of grief. It was as if we had all been punched in the gut. Yet soon people shrugged, as if to say: “We knew he was never going to be convicted of killing a black child,” and “What did you expect?””

Turning to Facebook, Alicia wrote a ‘Love Letter to Black Folks’: “We don’t deserve to be killed with impunity. We need to love ourselves and fight for a world where black lives matter. Black people, I love you. I love us. We matter. Our lives matter.”

In a matter of moments, fellow community organiser Patrisse Cullors created the social media hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, and Opal Tometi created the website and social media platforms that soon connected people across the country. Black Lives Matter was born, and the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter started spreading like wildfire. A year later, it went viral during the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, when people took to the streets with a simple demand: Stop Killing Us.

“As we say ‘Black Lives Matter’, you see the light that comes inside of people from Black communities and other communities. People are like, ‘I’m going to stand on the side of Black lives.’ You see people transforming, and that’s a different type of work. For me, that is a spiritual work, a healing work. What a great time to be alive.”

Patrisse Cullors

This movement was born out of love, and love always wins.

2. BLM WAS A THING BEFORE IT WENT VIRAL

In 2013, steadily and strategically, the co-founders started to build the scaffolding of a nationwide on-the-ground political network.

Enter Ferguson. On August 9th, 2014, just a few weeks after Eric Garner died in a NYPD officer’s chokehold in New York City, Mike Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was killed by twelve police bullets in Ferguson, St Louis. Police left his body in the street for four and a half hours, steps away from his mother’s house.

The events that followed Mike Brown’s death have often been described as ‘the catalyst’ for the revolution-like protests that followed. “I can’t breathe” and “hands up, don’t shoot”, the last words of Eric Garner and Mike Brown, were chanted loudly – people young and old mobilised to mourn and protest police brutality and racism. They were met with tanks, riot police and tear gas.

For the Black Lives Matter Global Network, it meant that the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag went viral on social media. Black Lives Matter became a slogan that leapt into the streets. Technology accelerated the pace of organising people, and allowed the movement to amplify their calls in ways that were impossible before.Over 500 members from across the US joined Patrisse Cullors in a #BlackLivesMatter ‘freedom ride’ to Ferguson to support the movement in St. Louis.

We were humbled when cultural workers, artists, designers, and techies offered their labor and love to expand #BlackLivesMatter beyond a social media hashtag.

Alicia Garza

For some ‘Black Lives Matter’ was a wakeup call, for many others the words gave voice to a deep seeded awareness of what it felt like to be black in America.

Black Lives Matter became a rallying cry that captivated the country, galvanising a national movement for dignity, justice and respect.

3. BLM IS ABOUT MORE THAN ‘JUST’ POLICE BRUTALITY

Black Lives Matter is an intervention.

It is an affirmation of the value of Black life, and a condemnation of the racism that devalues it.

On their website, BLM writes: When we say Black Lives Matter, we are broadening the conversation around state violence to include all of the ways in which Black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state. We are talking about the ways in which Black lives are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity.

Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors says: “Black Lives Matter is our call to action, it is about replacing narratives of black criminality with black humanity, a tool to re-imagine a world where black people are free to exist, free to live, and a tool for our allies to show up for us”.

Black Lives Matter demands that American society reconsider how it values black lives by identifying where and how black life is cut short, whether in viral videos of police brutality, the self-fulfilling prophecy of the criminal justice system, or in areas where black communities disproportionally face homelessness, poverty and economic disparity.

Black Lives Matter is about structural change. It is about sparking dialogue and changing the conversation: If it is true that black lives matter, then what does that mean for police reform, for our justice systems, for schools, for jobs, for infrastructure, and for economic development? If black lives matter, then what needs to change in politics and in the media?

To steer these conversations, over 50 organisations – including the Black Lives Matter Global Network – united in the Movement for Black Lives to launch “A Vision for Black Lives” in August 2016, ahead of the Presidential election. Following a year-long consultation process, a series of 40 policy goals calls for divestment from law enforcement (including ending the death penalty and mass incarceration) and investment in black communities through reparations, educational reform, jobs and infrastructure, and increased community control of neighbourhoods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIUnz3cfo-w

4. BLM IS ABOUT A THING CALLED ORGANISING

Protests are just one tool in a big toolbox of tactics for change.

BLM’s disruptive actions and protest strategies are modern and bold, and regularly make media headlines. But whilst protests may get lots of media attention, organising is what builds sustainable, resourced movements. Organising includes building critical communities connections, convening member-led organisations where everyday people can strategise together, and cultivating local leadership. Organising includes creating space to reimagine what a fair and just society looks like, and to develop political thinking and ideas. Organising includes finding allies and co-conspirators, and building collective power to demand changes. Organising also means fostering peoples’ skills to hold office bearers accountable for their decisions, and creating space for the celebration and humanisation of Black lives.

BLM’s persistence and evolvement has breathed new life into the legacy of the black freedom struggle, reenergising older activists who are eager to connect with a new generation of organisers.

I identify as an organizer versus an activist because I believe an organizer is the smallest unit that you build your team around. The organizer is the person who gets the press together and who builds new leaders, the person who helps to build and launch campaigns, and is the person who decides what the targets will be and how we’re going to change this world.

Our folks have continued to organize locally, not just hit the streets. Many of our people are thinking about how to enact a political strategy. How do we build black power in this moment? How do we actually get people in office?

It’s not a hashtag that built the movement. It was organizers, activists, educators, artists — people who built an actual infrastructure so that a movement can exist and have life.

Patrisse Cullors

5. BLM IS NOT JUST A #HASHTAG, IT’S A GLOBAL NETWORK

For Alicia, Patrisse and Opal, #BlackLivesMatter was never meant to be ‘just’ a hashtag or social media meme. Long before the protests that grabbed the world’s attention, the Co-Founders started to organise people across the country, encouraging a broader and deeper conversation about what justice and dignity for black people might look like in an era of increasing inequality, mass incarceration and relentless police violence—and how people could join forces and build the power needed to achieve it.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network now has over 40 chapters worldwide, scattered across the US, Canada, the UK and with a growing presence in South African and Australia.

Activists for black, brown, and Indigenous rights around the world have adopted the Black Lives Matter slogan alongside homegrown movements against racism and police brutality.

Last month, BLM marked its four-year anniversary and released a report about its guiding principles, challenges, and plans for the future, along with a snapshot of where its member organisations have been.

“Four years later, we still declare with conviction that Black Lives Matter everywhere.”

Patrisse Cullors

6. BLM IS LEADERFUL

Many people have called Black Lives Matter the civil rights movement of a new generation. There is a great deal of nostalgia in comparisons with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but if it’s up to the Network, this movement will look very different.

The Founders are committed to building a movement that relies less on the establishment voices of a single or few very charismatic, cisgender men. Rather, they nurture a decentralised movement from the bottom-up: A movement that encourages different voices to emerge and shape their leadership based on experiences and needs rooted in the community they organise. The Network is truly a grassroots movement with a commitment to a ‘leaderful’ structure.

It is in this spirit that the three Founders have accepted the Sydney Peace Prize for the Black Lives Matter Global Network:

The Sydney Peace Prize is an affirmation and reminds us that we are on a righteous path. Accepting this award is about our people on the ground striving for justice every single day. It’s truly meaningful to be recognized in this way. We’ll continue to push forward until structural racism is dismantled and every Black life matters. It’s our duty in times like this to keep our eyes steadfast on the freedom we deserve.

Opal Tometi, Co-founder Black Lives Matter and Executive Director, Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI)

7. ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER

The Black Lives Matter Global Network was founded on the values of inclusivity and love.

Black Lives Matter means ALL black lives matter and are creators of this space. Queer Black lives, Trans Black lives, formerly incarcerated Black lives, differently-abled Black lives, Black women’s lives, immigrant black lives, Black elderly and children’s lives. We rise together.

The Founders want the faces of this movement to reflect the change they strive towards in their own communities, which is that all black lives matter, regardless of their gender, class, sexual orientation, or age. Everyone’s contribution is valid as long as people commit to uphold a number of Guiding Principles. These include working “collectively, lovingly and courageously”, making space for queer leadership, respecting diversity, practicing empathy, and working towards an intergenerational network.

Black Lives Matter is committed to “(re)building the Black liberation movement”: the Network supports those who were previously on the margins and invisible from the public eye – women, LGBTQIA people, undocumented immigrants, people with disabilities, and people with records – to take centre stage.

8. BLM DOES NOT SAY THAT ONLY BLACK LIVES MATTER

When people counter Black Lives Matter’s call for justice with the phrase “all lives matter,” there is undoubtedly a fallacy is this response.

While all lives should matter, this is a utopia as we do not currently live in a world where all lives are equal. The statement “Black lives matter” is not an anti-white proposition. Contained within the statement is an unspoken but implied “too,” as in “black lives matter, too,” – it is a statement of inclusion rather than exclusion. Only when Black lives matter will all lives matter. Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean your life isn’t important – it means that Black lives, which are seen without value within White supremacy, are important to your liberation.

Therefore, to say “all lives matter” in response to Black people saying “Black lives matter” is actually saying that Black lives don’t matter.

“But we’re a group that’s looking at the totality of anti-black racism and its effects on communities of color,” Cullors says.

Black Lives Matter sprang from a place of love, and inclusivity is at the very heart of their important work. A common misconception is that Black Lives Matter is only a trendy hashtag or that it only fights police brutality or vigilante violence against black people. BLM is not about saying yes to one identity, but about looking at how all marginalised people are impacted by Trump and his regime. BLM looks at the totality of anti-black racism and its effects on communities of color, collaborates with other progressive coalitions (sometimes under the banner of ‘The Majority‘) and supports other minority groups. For example, they have stood in solidarity with the Water Protectors at Standing Rock, and were amongst the first to gather at airports to protest President Trump’s Muslim ban, declaring:

“We must rise in solidarity whenever and wherever necessary. (…) We know that these attacks do not live in a vacuum and that our issues are connected. This fight is for all who believe in justice.”

9. BLACK LIVES MATTER FIGHTS WHITE SUPREMACY EVERY DAY

White supremacy, both the visible and more insidious invisible incantations of it, is alive and well across the globe. The rise of Trump in the US saw the emboldening of hate groups across the US. To garner votes and stoke anti-establishment flames, Trump latched on to the ideology of white supremacy and incentivised violence on the campaign trail, promising his supporters — some of whom carried the banners of Nazism and Klansmanship — he would “pay for the legal fees” of anyone who got violent with anti-Trump protesters.

While Trump can certainly be credited with fanning the flames of white supremacy, it is undeniable that violent racial inequality is woven into the very fabric of the American story (as is the case here in Australia). The sickening violence at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, made visible structural imbalances and privileges that have historical roots and continue to divide a nation and drive inequality. It is clear that white supremacy is not on the fringes of our society – it is in the White House and in Trump’s Cabinet, but also in our work places, living next door to us, and serving us our morning lattes.

“To be shocked really means folks have an ahistorical analysis of this country. What we saw in Charlottesville, and what we’ll continue to see across the country as white nationalist groups rise up and take to the streets, is that this is very much the fabric of American culture.”

Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors

Black Lives Matter is working across geographical and issue areas to call attention to white supremacy and build sustainable, resourced movements to significantly reduce it. Organisers are taking the fight to their own backyards, organising people in local communities, having courageous conversations with people who would not otherwise have courageous conversations with us, or encouraging our allies to have those conversations in our stead.

10. BLM RESONATES HERE IN AUSTRALIA

We can’t talk about Black Lives Matter without looking at our own backyard.

Racism and systemic discrimination is all to prevalent in Australia. Whilst the struggles are different in many ways, various communities feel a strong resonance with the Black Lives Matter movement in the US.

As BLM Co-Founder Alicia Garza, who in 2016 spoke with Stan Grant at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, says: People in Australia tend to highlight how big BLM is in the States, but Australia has some serious, serious issues around Black lives mattering.”

Australia struggles to come to terms with its past and fails to right ongoing wrongs. Australia’s First Peoples have fought for justice and dignity for decades, very few people know about Australia’s past of slavery or ‘blackbirding‘ of which our South Sea Islander community is still feeling the repercussions, and Australia’s treatment of refugees and migrants, whether on Australian soil or in overseas detention centres, reeks of racism and discrimination.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network declared “we receive this award with tremendous gratitude and in solidarity with organizers throughout Australia who, in the face of egregious oppression, fightback against the state and proclaim that all Black Lives Matter.”

Particularly Australia’s First Peoples continue to endure systemic inter-generational injustice and trauma.

Most of the 339 recommendations from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths have been gathering dust for years, yet imprisonment rates for Indigenous Australians are at an all-time high. In the Northern Territory and Western Australia more than 80 percent of the prison population is Indigenous, and the number of deaths in custody is increasing. In Western Australia, Indigenous suicides are eight times the national rate, and children as young as eight years old are suiciding. Since Kevin Rudd’s Apology, children have been removed from their families four times as often than during the Stolen Generations.

When Ms Dhu died after being jailed for unpaid fines, and when Elijah Doughty’s killer was found not guilty of manslaughter, communities around the country used ‘Black Lives Matter’ to demand justice for all Black victims.

Senator Patrick Dodson, 2008 Sydney Peace Prize Laureate, strongly supported the choice of the Jury: “This movement resonates around the globe and here in Australia, where we have become inured to the high incarceration rates and deaths in custody of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It’s as if their lives do not matter. When there is ignorance, hostility, discrimination or racism, and they are allowed to reign unchecked, then we are all diminished.”

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“No is Not Enough”: New book on resisting Trump by 2016 Laureate Naomi Klein

Sydney Peace Foundation — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 23:28:05 +0000

Next month 2016 Sydney Peace Prize recipient Naomi Klein is releasing her new publication No is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need!

We already know that the Trump administration plans to deregulate markets, wage all-out war on “radical Islamic terrorism,” trash climate science and unleash a fossil-fuel frenzy. It’s a vision that can be counted on to generate a tsunami of crises and shocks: economic shocks, as market bubbles burst; security shocks, as blowback from foreign belligerence comes home; weather shocks, as our climate is further destabilized; and industrial shocks, as oil pipelines spill and rigs collapse, which they tend to do, especially when enjoying light-touch regulation.

All this is dangerous enough. What’s even worse is the way the Trump administration can be counted on to exploit these shocks politically and economically.

Designed as a “toolkit for shock-resistance”, Naomi writes that ‘culture jamming’ is the way to gain the upper hand on Trump. The empire he has built around his personal brand gives us leverage to resist his cruel and unjust regime, and may hold the key to forcing him to use his position as President of the United States to help people other than himself.

“This book [helps us understand] how we arrived at this surreal political moment, how to keep it from getting a lot worse, and how, if we keep our heads, we can flip the script and seize the opportunity to make things a whole lot better in a time of urgent need.”

https://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/NK_Jamming-the-trump-brand.mp4

Naomi’s four steps to Jamming the Trump Brand:

Step 1: Fire the boss: If Trump’s personal brand is being the boss, make him look like a puppet.

Step 2: Make Richie Rich less rich: Actively make sure Trump’s brand doesn’t get your business.

Step 3: Go after the big fish: Ensure developers aren’t willing to put Trump’s name on their buildings.

Step 4: Be a nuisance: Jam the phone lines to Trump’s hotels with polite comments on Trump’s policy.

“If his brand gets battered enough, Trump might just course correct.”

Click here for more information and to preorder

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‘We are all entrepreneurs’: Muhammad Yunus on changing the world, one microloan at a time

Sydney Peace Foundation — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 00:26:02 +0000

This week Professor Muhammad Yunus visits Australia. Professor Yunus received the first-ever Sydney Peace Prize in 1998, eight years before winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Events and lectures are sold out, but Professor Yunus will appear on ABC Q&A on Monday 3 April. Tune in at 9.35pm AEST, or watch via ABC i view.

This article, written by Miriam Cosic, appeared in The Guardian on Tuesday 28 March.

Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi economist, microfinancing pioneer and founder of the grassroots Grameen Bank, has not been resting on his laurels since wining the Nobel peace prize in 2006.

Professor Muhammad Yunus. Photo credit – Getty Images

For one thing, he has expanded his concept to developed countries via Yunus Social Business, founded in 2011. “Globally, the issues are the same,” he says. “In terms of poverty, of welfare recipients, of housing problems, water problems, in terms of healthcare problems. These are common problems, rich country or poor country. Australia has poor people, America has poor people, Europe has poor people.”

In the past year, he has begun establishing Yunus Social Business centres at universities around the world, including at Australia’s University of New South Wales and Latrobe University. Two centres are slated to open in New Zealand this year.

“Young people have to know about it,” he says. “They should learn that there are two kinds of businesses in the world. One is a business which makes money, and the other solves the problems of the world. It’s an academic exercise and what they do with that in real life will depend on them, what kind of life they would like to choose.”

Yunus is speaking to the Guardian on the eve of a trip to Melbourne for the Australasian Social Business Forum. The event is titled “Positive Disruption: Lead the Change”.

Disruption? Teased for being a Marxist, a revolutionary, a danger to society even, Yunus says: “Revolution is no solution. What do you do after the revolution? You have to figure out the purpose of the revolution. You don’t want to go back to communism, that didn’t solve any problems.”

Yet capitalism isn’t working for him either. The idea behind his multi award-winning idea of microcredit is that everyone is a natural entrepreneur. We tend to think entrepreneurs are those who succeed in a globalised financial system that is rapidly re-establishing the extreme inequalities that western governments legislated to limit in the 20th century.

Human beings are not born to work for anybody else

Muhammad Yunus

Yunus cites the oft-quoted statistic that one percent of the population of rich countries owns 99% of the wealth. “And every day it’s getting worse,” he says. His radical idea, established in poverty-stricken Bangladesh in the 1970s, was that if poor people were given a proper start and encouragement, their natural entrepreneurship would flourish.

“Human beings are not born to work for anybody else,” he says. “For millions of years that we were on the planet, we never worked for anybody. We are go-getters. We are farmers. We are hunters. We lived in caves and we found our own food, we didn’t send job applications. So this is our tradition.

“There are roughly 160 million people all over the world in microcredit, mostly women. And they have proven one very important thing: that we are all entrepreneurs. Illiterate rural women in the villages, in the mountains, take tiny little loans – $30, $40 – and they turn themselves into successful entrepreneurs.”

He points out that entrepreneurship is a particular boon for women, whose family duties – which they still shoulder even in more egalitarian western countries – make the nine-to-five world difficult.

Professor Yunus addressing the Sydney community during his 1998 visit

In the mid 70s, as a young economics professor, Yunus experimented with lending a mere $27 to 42 women in the village of Jobra near his university in Chittagong. Banks would not lend to the poor, fearing default, and moneylenders charged extortionate rates. His experiment was a success, and he began to develop the idea, in practice as well as in theory, eventually establishing the Grameen Bank.

At 76 years old, Yunus is still enthusiastic, despite fighting roiling political criticism in Bangladesh, spearheaded by prime minister Sheikh Hasina. Yunus has been accused of everything from having an autocratic management style to embezzlement and tax fraud. In 2011, the government moved to have him removed as head of his bank, formally citing his age. More seriously, perhaps, a vocal school of economic thought disagrees that microfinancing can enrich the poor.

Nonetheless, the Grameen Bank today has nine million borrowers, 97% of them women. “They own the bank. It is a bank owned by poor women,” he says. “The repayment rate is 99.6%, and it has never fallen below that in our eight years of experience.” Part of his expansion into rich countries includes a program in the US: 19 branches in 11 cities, including eight in New York. “We have nearly 100,000 borrowers there now and 100% women. Not a single man.”

Globalisation and the technological revolution may make Yunus’s theory timelier than even he expected when he began. Globalisation has sent manufacturing from rich countries to poor, and robots will eventually kill many of those jobs too as corporations seek to minimise costs and maximise profits. In rich countries, jobs are more precarious, people no longer expect the security of a job for life, and welfare is rapidly being reduced by the vogue for austerity economics.

Fostering entrepreneurship is the solution, Yunus says. And his concept of social business – created for pro-social goals, not profit – is the solution to social and environmental problems caused by intense capitalist competition. Some pioneering companies are already embracing it. Their reasons – genuine benevolence, good publicity, “greenwashing” – hardly matters, he says.

France is a leader. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, wants to make her city a hub for social businesses. She has committed to making it a central feature of the 2024 Olympics if Paris wins its bid. “Many French businesses created social businesses on their own, running parallel to their conventional business,” Yunus adds.

Danone, the French dairy company, was one of the first, agreeing to form Danone Grameen in 2007 to produce fortified yoghurt for malnourished children in Bangladesh. The water company Veolia made a similar joint venture to provide safe drinking water in Bangladeshi villages, while the American food company, McCain, has a joint venture with Grameen helping farmers in Colombia raise crop yields. India is preparing to launch an “action tank” as Yunus calls it – a group of businesses that collaborate to create social enterprises on the side.

The bulk of the investment in these partnerships comes from the company, which expects no profit: it only takes back the amount of their investment over a period of time. “We just participate in a token way,” Yunus says. “A thousand euros or something like that, but we allow the name to be attached to the company to show that this is a genuine social business.”

Yunus maintains that people working in these sorts of businesses get a feel-good reward on top of their salaries. “Even shareholders start enjoying it,” he adds. “They don’t mind earning a little less if it is helping the children of the country, or poor people, or single mothers. They are proud that their company is taking care of that.”

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2014 Laureate Julian Burnside AO QC on the US Immigration Ban and the Refugee Deal

Sydney Peace Foundation — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 02:25:13 +0000

In the wake of President Trump’s travel ban, and the subsequent uncertainty surrounding Australia’s refugee deal with the US, 2014 Sydney Peace Prize recipient Julian Burnside joined Radio Adelaide to weigh in on the rise of nationalism and the growing apathy towards human rights.

“Little by little the idea of human rights has become less fashionable, less popular, less acceptable. And [a way of] thinking which is utterly incompatible with the idea of human rights has become increasingly acceptable and even main stream.”

https://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/refugee-ban-and-deal-with-us.mp3

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2011 Laureate Noam Chomsky on Donald Trump: how we got here, and what now?

Sydney Peace Foundation — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 05:55:24 +0000

2011 Sydney Peace Prize recipient Professor Noam Chomsky has been incredibly vocal about the dangers posed by a Trump presidency, well before the primaries and certainly after the inauguration.

The below two interviews illustrate Chomsky’s view on how the United States’ unique form of democracy gave rise to Trump, and why he has serious concerns about President Trump moving forward.

Trump and the Flawed Nature of US Democracy: An Interview With Noam Chomsky

By C.J. Polychroniou

Trump’s presidential victory exposed to the whole world the flawed nature of the US model of democracy. Beginning January 20, both the country and the world will have to face a political leader with copious conflicts of interest who considers his unpredictable and destructive style to be a leadership asset. In this exclusive interview for Truthout, world-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky sheds light on the type of democratic model the US has designed and elaborates on the political import of Trump’s victory for the two major parties, as this new political era begins.

C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, I want to start by asking you to reflect on the following: Trump won the presidential election even though he lost the popular vote. In this context, if “one person, one vote” is a fundamental principle behind every legitimate model of democracy, what type of democracy prevails in the US, and what will it take to undo the anachronism of the Electoral College?

Noam Chomsky: The Electoral College was originally supposed to be a deliberative body drawn from educated and privileged elites. It would not necessarily respond to public opinion, which was not highly regarded by the founders, to put it mildly. “The mass of people … seldom judge or determine right,” as Alexander Hamilton put it during the framing of the Constitution, expressing a common elite view. Furthermore, the infamous 3/5th clause ensured the slave states an extra boost, a very significant issue considering their prominent role in the political and economic institutions. As the party system took shape in the 19th century, the Electoral College became a mirror of the state votes, which can give a result quite different from the popular vote because of the first-past-the-post rule — as it did once again in this election. Eliminating the Electoral College would be a good idea, but it’s virtually impossible as the political system is now constituted. It is only one of many factors that contribute to the regressive character of the [US] political system, which, as Seth Ackerman observes in an interesting article in Jacobin magazine, would not pass muster by European standards.

Ackerman focuses on one severe flaw in the US system: the dominance of organizations that are not genuine political parties with public participation but rather elite-run candidate-selection institutions often described, not unrealistically, as the two factions of the single business party that dominates the political system. They have protected themselves from competition by many devices that bar genuine political parties that grow out of free association of participants, as would be the case in a properly functioning democracy. Beyond that there is the overwhelming role of concentrated private and corporate wealth, not just in the presidential campaigns, as has been well documented, particularly by Thomas Ferguson, but also in Congress.

A recent study by Ferguson, Paul Jorgensen and Jie Chen on “How Money Drives US Congressional Elections,” reveals a remarkably close correlation between campaign expenditures and electoral outcomes in Congress over decades. And extensive work in academic political science — particularly by Martin Gilens, Benjamin Page and Larry Bartlett — reveals that most of the population is effectively unrepresented, in that their attitudes and opinions have little or no effect on decisions of the people they vote for, which are pretty much determined by the very top of the income-wealth scale. In the light of such factors as these, the defects of the Electoral College, while real, are of lesser significance.

C.J. Polychroniou: To what extent is this presidential election a defining moment for Republicans and Democrats alike?

Noam Chomsky: For the eight years of the Obama presidency, the Republican organization has hardly qualified as a political party. A more accurate description was given by the respected political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute: the party became an “insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

Its guiding principle was: Whatever Obama tries to do, we have to block it, but without providing some sensible alternative. The goal was to make the country ungovernable, so that the insurgency could take power. Its infantile antics on the Affordable Care Act are a good illustration: endless votes to repeal it in favor of — nothing. Meanwhile the party has become split between the wealthy and privileged “establishment,” devoted to the interests of their class, and the popular base that was mobilized when the establishment commitments to wealth and privilege became so extreme that it would be impossible to garner votes by presenting them accurately. It was therefore necessary to mobilize sectors that had always existed, but not as an organized political force: a strange amalgam of Christian evangelicals — a huge sector of the American population — nativists, white supremacists, white working and lower middle class victims of the neoliberal policies of the past generation, and others who are fearful and angry, cast aside in the neoliberal economy while they perceive their traditional culture as being under attack. In past primaries, the candidates who rose from the base — Bachmann, Cain, Santorum and the rest — were so extreme that they were anathema to the establishment, who were able to use their ample resources to rid themselves of the plague and choose their favored candidate. The difference in 2016 is that they were unable to do it.

Now the Republican Party faces the task of formulating policies other than “No.” It must find a way to craft policies that will somehow pacify or marginalize the popular base while serving the real constituency of the establishment. It is from this sector that Trump is picking his close associates and cabinet members: not exactly coal miners, iron and steel workers, small business owners, or representatives of the concerns and demands of much of his voting base.

Democrats have to face the fact that for 40 years they have pretty much abandoned whatever commitment they had to working people. It’s quite shocking that Democrats have drifted so far from their modern New Deal origins that some workers are now voting for their class enemy, not for the party of FDR. A return to some form of social democracy should not be impossible, as indicated by the remarkable success of the Sanders campaign, which departed radically from the norm of elections effectively bought by wealth and corporate power. It is important to bear in mind that his “political revolution,” while quite appropriate for the times, would not have much surprised Dwight Eisenhower, another indication of the shift to the right during the neoliberal years.

If the Democratic Party is going to be a constructive force, it will have to develop and commit itself credibly to programs that address the valid concerns of the kind of people who voted for Obama, attracted by his message of “hope and change,” and when disillusioned by the disappearance of hope and the lack of change switched to the con man who declared that he will bring back what they have lost. It will be necessary to face honestly the malaise of much of the country, including people like those in the Louisiana Bayou whom Arlie Hochschild studied with such sensitivity and insight, and surely including the former working class constituency of the Democrats. The malaise is revealed in many ways, not least by the astonishing fact that mortality has increased in the country, something unknown in modern industrial democracies apart from catastrophic events. That’s particularly true among middle-aged whites, mainly traceable to what are sometimes called “diseases of despair” (opioids, alcohol, suicide, etc.). A statistical analysis reported by the Economist found that these health metrics correlate with a remarkable 43 percent of the Republican Party’s gains over the Democrats in the 2016 election, and remain significant and predictive even when controlling for race, education, age, gender, income, marital status, immigration and employment. These are all signs of severe collapse of much of the society, particularly in rural and working class areas. Furthermore, such initiatives have to be undertaken alongside of firm dedication to the rights and needs of those sectors of the population that have historically been denied rights and repressed, often in harsh and brutal ways.

No small task, but not beyond reach, if not by the Democrats, then by some political party replacing them, drawing from popular movements — and through the constant activism of these movements, quite apart from electoral politics.

C.J. Polychroniou: Much of the rest of the world — with the notable exception of some of Europe’s extreme nationalist and anti-immigrant political leaders — also seems to be rather anxious about Trump’s aims and intents. Isn’t that so?

Noam Chomsky: Trump’s victory was met in Europe with shock and disbelief. The general reaction was captured quite accurately, for instance, on the front cover of Der Spiegel [a major German weekly]. It depicted a caricature of Trump presented as a meteor hurtling toward Earth, mouth open, ready to swallow it up. And the lead headline read “Das Ende Der Welt!” (“The End of the World”). And in small letters below, “as we have known it.” To be sure, there might be some truth to that concern, even if not exactly in the manner in which the artist and the authors who echoed that conception had in mind.

The above article text can also be accessed here.

Trump’s America and the New World Order: A Conversation With Noam Chomsky

By C.J. Polychroniou

Are Donald Trump’s selections for his cabinet and other top administration positions indicative of a man who is ready to “drain the swamp?” Is the president-elect bent on putting China on the defensive? What does he have in mind for the Middle East? And why did Barack Obama choose at this juncture — that is, toward the end of his presidency — to have the US abstain from a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements? Are new trends and tendencies in the world order emerging? In this exclusive Truthout interview, Noam Chomsky addresses these critical questions just two weeks before the White House receives its new occupant.

C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, the president-elect’s cabinet is being filled by financial and corporate bigwigs and military leaders. Such selections hardly reconcile with Trump’s pre-election promises to “drain the swamp,” so what should we expect from this megalomaniac and phony populist insofar as the future of the Washington establishment is concerned?

Noam Chomsky: In this respect — note the qualification — Time magazine put it fairly well (in a Dec. 26 column by Joe Klein): “While some supporters may balk, Trump’s decision to embrace those who have wallowed in the Washington muck has spread a sense of relief among the capital’s political class. ‘It shows,’ says one GOP consultant close to the President-elect’s transition, ‘that he’s going to govern like a normal Republican’.”

There surely is some truth to this. Business and investors plainly think so. The stock market boomed right after the election, led by the financial companies that Trump denounced during his campaign, particularly the leading demon of his rhetoric, Goldman Sachs. According to Bloomberg News, “The firm’s surging stock price,” up 30 percent in the month after the election, “has been the largest driver behind the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s climb toward 20,000.” The stellar market performance of Goldman Sachs is based largely on Trump’s reliance on the demon to run the economy, buttressed by the promised roll-back in regulations, setting the stage for the next financial crisis (and taxpayer bailout). Other big gainers are energy corporations, health insurers and construction firms, all expecting huge profits from the administration’s announced plans. These include a Paul Ryan-style fiscal program of tax cuts for the rich and corporations, increased military spending, turning the health system over even more to insurance companies with predictable consequences, taxpayer largesse for a privatized form of credit-based infrastructure development, and other “normal Republican” gifts to wealth and privilege at taxpayer expense. Rather plausibly, economist Larry Summers describes the fiscal program as “the most misguided set of tax changes in US history [which] will massively favor the top 1 per cent of income earners, threaten an explosive rise in federal debt, complicate the tax code and do little if anything to spur growth.”

But, great news for those who matter.

There are, however, some losers in the corporate system. Since November 8, gun sales, which more than doubled under Obama, have been dropping sharply, perhaps because of lessened fears that the government will take away the assault rifles and other armaments we need to protect ourselves from the Feds. Sales rose through the year as polls showed Clinton in the lead, but after the election, the Financial Times reported, “shares in gun makers such as Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger plunged.” By mid-December, “the two companies had fallen 24 per cent and 17 per cent since the election, respectively.” But all is not lost for the industry. As a spokesman explains, “To put it in perspective, US consumer sales of firearms are greater than the rest of the world combined. It’s a pretty big market.”

C.J. Polychroniou: Normal Republicans cheer Trump’s choice for Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, one of the most extreme fiscal hawks, though a problem does arise. How will a fiscal hawk manage a budget designed to massively escalate the deficit? In a post-fact world, maybe that doesn’t matter.

Noam Chomsky: Also cheering to “normal Republicans” is the choice of the radically anti-labor Andy Puzder for secretary of labor, though here too a contradiction may lurk in the background. As the ultrarich CEO of restaurant chains, he relies on the most easily exploited non-union labor for the dirty work, typically immigrants, which doesn’t comport well with the plans to deport them en masse. The same problem arises for the infrastructure programs; the private firms that are set to profit from these initiatives rely heavily on the same labor source, though perhaps that problem can be finessed by redesigning the “beautiful wall” so that it will only keep out Muslims.

C.J. Polychroniou: Is this to say then that Trump will be a “normal” Republican as America’s 45th President?

Noam Chomsky: In such respects as the ones mentioned above, Trump proved himself very quickly to be a normal Republican, if to the extremist side. But in other respects he may not be a normal Republican, if that means something like a mainstream establishment Republican — people like Mitt Romney, whom Trump went out of his way to humiliate in his familiar style, just as he did to McCain and others of this category. But it’s not only his style that causes offense and concern. His actions do as well.

Take just the two most significant issues that we face, the most significant that humans have ever faced in their brief history on earth; issues that bear on species survival: nuclear war and global warming. Shivers went up the spine of many “normal Republicans,” as of others who care about the fate of the species, when Trump tweeted that “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” Expanding nuclear capability means casting to the winds the treaties that have sharply reduced nuclear arsenals and that sane analysts hope may reduce them much further, in fact, to zero, as advocated by such normal Republicans as Henry Kissinger and Reagan Secretary of State George Shultz, and by Reagan, in some of his moments. Concerns did not abate when Trump went on to tell the cohost of TV show Morning Joe “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass.” And it wasn’t too comforting even when his White House team tried to explain that “The Donald” didn’t say what he said.

Nor do concerns abate because Trump was presumably reacting to Putin’s statement: “We need to strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense systems. We must carefully monitor any changes in the balance of power and in the political-military situation in the world, especially along Russian borders, and quickly adapt plans for neutralizing threats to our country.”

Whatever one thinks of these words, they have a defensive cast and as Putin has stressed, they are in large part a reaction to the highly provocative installation of a missile defense system on Russia’s border on the pretext of defense against nonexistent Iranian weapons. Trump’s tweet intensifies fears about how he might react when crossed, for example, by unwillingness of some adversary to bow to his vaunted negotiating skills. If the past is any guide he might, after all, find himself in a situation where he must decide within a few minutes whether to blow up the world.

The other crucial issue is environmental catastrophe. It cannot be stressed too strongly that Trump won two victories on November 8: the lesser one in the Electoral College and the greater one in Marrakech, where some 200 countries were seeking to put teeth in the promises of the Paris negotiations on climate change. On Election Day, the conference heard a dire report on the state of the Anthropocene from the World Meteorological Organization. As the results of the election came in, the stunned participants virtually abandoned the proceedings, wondering if anything could survive the withdrawal of the most powerful state in world history. Nor can one stress too often the astonishing spectacle of the world placing its hopes for salvation in China, while the leader of the free world stands alone as a wrecking machine.

Although — amazingly — most ignored these astounding events, establishment circles did have some response. In Foreign Affairs, Varun Sivaram and Sagatom Saha warned of the costs to the US of “ceding climate leadership to China,” and the dangers to the world because China “would lead on climate-change issues only insofar as doing so would advance its national interests” —
unlike the altruistic United States, which supposedly labors selflessly only for the benefit of mankind.

How intent Trump is on driving the world to the precipice was revealed by his appointments, including his choice of two militant climate change deniers, Myron Ebell and Scott Pruit, to take charge of dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency that was established under Richard Nixon, with another denier slated to head the Department of Interior.

But that’s only the beginning. The cabinet appointments would be comical if the implications were not so serious. For Department of Energy, a man who said it should be eliminated (when he could remember its name) and is perhaps unaware that its main concern is nuclear weapons. For Department of Education, another billionaire, Betsy DeVos, who is dedicated to undermining and perhaps eliminating the public school system and who, as Lawrence Krause reminds us in the New Yorker, is a fundamentalist Christian member of a Protestant denomination holding that “all scientific theories be subject to Scripture” and that “Humanity is created in the image of God; all theorizing that minimizes this fact and all theories of evolution that deny the creative activity of God are rejected.” Perhaps the Department should request funding from Saudi sponsors of Wahhabi madrassas to help the process along.

DeVos’s appointment is no doubt attractive to the evangelicals who flocked to Trump’s standard and constitute a large part of the base of today’s Republican Party. She should also be able to work amicably with Vice-President-elect Mike Pence, one of the “prized warriors [of] a cabal of vicious zealots who have long craved an extremist Christian theocracy,” as Jeremy Scahill details in The Intercept, reviewing his shocking record on other matters as well.

And so it continues, case by case. But not to worry. As James Madison assured his colleagues as they were framing the Constitution, a national republic would “extract from the mass of the Society the purest and noblest characters which it contains.”

C.J. Polychroniou: What about the choice of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State?

Noam Chomsky: One partial exception to the above is choice of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State, which has aroused some hope among those across the spectrum who are rightly concerned with the rising and extremely hazardous tensions with Russia. Tillerson, like Trump in some of his pronouncements, has called for diplomacy rather than confrontation, which is all to the good — until we remember the sable lining of the beam of sunshine. The motive is to allow ExxonMobil to exploit vast Siberian oil fields and so to accelerate the race to disaster to which Trump and associates, and the Republican Party rather generally, are committed.

C.J. Polychroniou: And how about Trump’s national security staff — do they fit the mold of “normal” Republicans, or are they also part of the extreme Right?

Noam Chomsky: Normal Republicans might be somewhat ambivalent about Trump’s national security staff. It is led by National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn, a radical Islamophobe who declares that Islam is not a religion but rather, a political ideology, like fascism, which is at war with us, so we must defend ourselves, presumably against the whole Muslim world — a fine recipe for generating terrorists, not to speak of far worse consequences. Like the Red Menace of earlier years, this Islamic ideology is penetrating deep into American society, Flynn declaims. They are, he says, being helped by Democrats, who have voted to impose Sharia law in Florida, much as their predecessors served the Commies, as Joe McCarthy famously demonstrated. Indeed, there are “over 100 cases around the country,” including Texas, Flynn warned in a speech in San Antonio. To ward off the imminent threat, Flynn is a board member of ACT!, which pushes state laws banning Sharia law, plainly an imminent threat in states like Oklahoma, where 70 percent of voters approved legislation to prevent the courts from applying this grim menace to the judicial system.

Second to Flynn in the national security apparatus is Secretary of Defense Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis, considered a relative moderate. Mad Dog has explained that “It’s fun to shoot some people.” He achieved his fame by leading the assault on Fallujah in November 2004, one of the most vicious crimes of the Iraq invasion. A man who is “just great,” according to the president-elect: “the closest thing we have to Gen. George Patton.”

C.J. Polychroniou: In your view, is Trump bent on a collision course with China?

Noam Chomsky: It’s hard to say. Concerns were voiced about Trump’s attitudes toward China, again full of contradictions, particularly his pronouncements on trade, which are almost meaningless in the current system of corporate globalization and complex international supply chains. Eyebrows were raised over his sharp departure from long-standing policy in his phone call with Taiwan’s president, but even more by his implying that the US might reject China’s concerns over Taiwan unless China accepts his trade proposals, thus linking trade policy “to an issue of great-power politics over which China may be willing to go to war,” the business press warned.

C.J. Polychroniou: What of Trump’s views and stance on the Middle East? They seem to be in line with those of “normal” Republicans, right?

Noam Chomsky: Unlike with China, normal Republicans did not seem dismayed by Trump’s tweet foray into Middle East diplomacy, again breaking with standard protocol, demanding that Obama veto UN Security Council resolution 2334, which reaffirmed “that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East [and] Calls once more upon Israel, as the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, to rescind its previous measures and to desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status and geographical nature and materially affecting the demographic composition of the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and, in particular, not to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the occupied Arab territories.”

Nor did they object when he informed Israel that it can ignore the lame duck administration and just wait until January 20, when all will be in order. What kind of order? That remains to be seen. Trump’s unpredictability serves as a word of caution.

What we know so far is Trump’s enthusiasm for the religious ultraright in Israel and the settler movement generally. Among his largest charitable contributions are gifts to the West Bank settlement of Beth El in honor of David Friedman, his choice as Ambassador to Israel. Friedman is president of American Friends of Beth El Institutions. The settlement, which is at the religious ultranationalist extreme of the settler movement, is also a favorite of the family of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, reported to be one of Trump’s closest advisers. A lead beneficiary of the Kushner family’s contributions, the Israeli press reports, “is a yeshiva headed by a militant rabbi who has urged Israeli soldiers to disobey orders to evacuate settlements and who has argued that homosexual tendencies arise from eating certain foods.”Other beneficiaries include “a radical yeshiva in Yitzhar that has served as a base for violent attacks against Palestinian’s villages and Israeli security forces.”

In isolation from the world, Friedman does not regard Israeli settlement activity as illegal and opposes a ban on construction for Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In fact, he appears to favor Israel’s annexation of the West Bank. That would not pose a problem for the Jewish state, Friedman explains, since the number of Palestinians living in the West Bank is exaggerated and therefore a large Jewish majority would remain after annexation. In a post-fact world, such pronouncements are legitimate, though they might become accurate in the boring world of fact after another mass expulsion. Jews who support the international consensus on a two-state settlement are not just wrong, Friedman says, they are “worse than kapos,” the Jews who were controlling other inmates in service to their Nazi masters in the concentration camps — the ultimate insult.

On receiving the report of his nomination, Friedman said he looked forward to moving the US embassy to “Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem,” in accord with Trump’s announced plans. In the past, such proposals were withdrawn, but today they might actually be fulfilled, perhaps advancing the prospects of a war with the Muslim world, as Trump’s National Security Adviser appears to recommend.

Returning to UNSC 2334 and its interesting aftermath, it is important to recognize that the resolution is nothing new. The quote given above was not from UNSC 2334 but from UNSC Resolution 446, passed on March 12, 1979, reiterated in essence in UNSC 2334.

UNSC 446 passed 12-0 with the US abstaining, joined by the UK and Norway. Several resolutions followed, reaffirming 446. One resolution of particular interest was even stronger than 446-2334, calling on Israel “to dismantle the existing settlements” (UNSC Resolution 465, passed in March 1980). This resolution passed unanimously, no abstentions.

The Government of Israel did not have to wait for the UN Security Council (and more recently, the World Court) to learn that its settlements are in gross violation of international law. In September 1967, only weeks after Israel’s conquest of the occupied territories, in a Top Secret document, the government was informed by the legal adviser to [Israel’s] Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the distinguished international lawyer Theodor Meron, that “civilian settlement in the administered territories [Israel’s term for the occupied territories] contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” Meron explained further that the prohibition against transfer of settlers to the occupied territories “is categorical and not conditional upon the motives for the transfer or its objectives. Its purpose is to prevent settlement in occupied territory of citizens of the occupying state.” Meron therefore advised that “If it is decided to go ahead with Jewish settlement in the administered territories, it seems to me vital, therefore, that settlement is carried out by military and not civilian entities. It is also important, in my view, that such settlement is in the framework of camps and is, on the face of it, of a temporary rather than permanent nature.”

Meron’s advice was followed. Settlement has often been disguised by the subterfuge suggested, the “temporary military entities” turning out later to be civilian settlements. The device of military settlement also has the advantage of providing a means to expel Palestinians from their lands on the pretext that a military zone is being established. Deceit was scrupulously planned, beginning as soon as Meron’s authoritative report was delivered to the government. As documented by Israeli scholar Avi Raz, in September 1967, on the day a second civilian settlement came into being in the West Bank, the government decided that “as a ‘cover’ for the purpose of [Israel’s] diplomatic campaign,” the new settlements should be presented as army settlements and the settlers should be given the necessary instructions in case they were asked about the nature of their settlement. The Foreign Ministry directed Israel’s diplomatic missions to present the settlements in the occupied territories as military “strongpoints” and to emphasize their alleged security importance.’

Similar practices continue to the present.

In response to the Security Council orders of 1979-80 to dismantle existing settlements and to establish no new ones, Israel undertook a rapid expansion of settlements with the cooperation of both of the major Israeli political blocs, Labor and Likud, always with lavish US material support.

The primary differences today are that the US is now alone against the whole world, and that it is a different world. Israel’s flagrant violations of Security Council orders, and of international law, are by now far more extreme than they were 35 years ago, and are arousing far greater condemnation in much of the world. The contents of Resolutions 446-2334 are therefore taken more seriously. Hence, the revealing reactions to 2334 and to Secretary of State John Kerry’s explanation of the US vote.

In the Arab world, the reactions seem to have been muted: We’ve been here before. In Europe they were generally supportive. In the US and Israel, in contrast, coverage and commentary were extensive, and there was considerable hysteria. These are further indications of the increasing isolation of the US on the world stage. Under Obama, that is. Under Trump US isolation will likely increase further and indeed, already did, even before he took office, as we have seen.

C.J. Polychroniou: Why did Obama choose abstention from the UN vote on Israeli settlements at this juncture, i.e., only a month or so before the end of his presidency?

Noam Chomsky: Just why Obama chose abstention rather than veto is an open question; we do not have direct evidence. But there are some plausible guesses. There had been some ripples of surprise (and ridicule) after Obama’s February 2011 veto of a UNSC Resolution calling for implementation of official US policy, and he may have felt that it would be too much to repeat it if he is to salvage anything of his tattered legacy among sectors of the population that have some concern for international law and human rights. It is also worth remembering that among liberal Democrats, if not Congress, and particularly among the young, opinion about Israel-Palestine has been moving toward criticism of Israeli policies in recent years, so much so that 60 percent of Democrats “support imposing sanctions or more serious action” in reaction to Israeli settlements, according to a December 2016 Brookings Institute poll. By now the core of support for Israeli policies in the US has shifted to the far right, including the evangelical base of the Republican Party. Perhaps these were factors in Obama’s decision, with his legacy in mind.

The 2016 abstention aroused furor in Israel and in the US Congress as well, among both Republicans and leading Democrats, including proposals to defund the UN in retaliation for the world’s crime. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu denounced Obama for his “underhanded, anti-Israel” actions. His office accused Obama of “colluding” behind the scenes with this “gang-up” by the Security Council, producing particles of “evidence” that hardly rise to the level of sick humor. A senior Israeli official added that the abstention “revealed the true face of the Obama administration,” adding that “now we can understand what we have been dealing with for the past eight years.”

Reality is rather different. Obama has, in fact, broken all records in support for Israel, both diplomatic and financial. The reality is described accurately by Financial Times Middle East specialist David Gardner: “Mr. Obama’s personal dealings with Mr. Netanyahu may often have been poisonous, but he has been the most pro-Israel of presidents: the most prodigal with military aid and reliable in wielding the US veto at the Security Council…. The election of Donald Trump has so far brought little more than turbo-frothed tweets to bear on this and other geopolitical knots. But the auguries are ominous. An irredentist government in Israel tilted towards the ultraright is now joined by a national populist administration in Washington fire-breathing Islamophobia.”

Public commentary on Obama’s decision and Kerry’s justification was split. Supporters generally agreed with Thomas Friedman that “Israel is clearly now on a path toward absorbing the West Bank’s 2.8 million Palestinians … posing a demographic and democratic challenge.”In a New York Times review of the state of the two-state solution defended by Obama-Kerry and threatened with extinction by Israeli policies, Max Fisher asks, “Are there other solutions?” He then turns to the possible alternatives, all of them “multiple versions of the so-called one-state solution” that poses a “demographic and democratic challenge”: too many Arabs — perhaps soon a majority — in a “Jewish and democratic state.”

In the conventional fashion, commentators assume that there are two alternatives: the two-state solution advocated by the world, or some version of the “one-state solution.” Ignored consistently is a third alternative, the one that Israel has been implementing quite systematically since shortly after the 1967 war and that is now very clearly taking shape before our eyes: a Greater Israel, sooner or later incorporated into Israel proper, including a vastly expanded Jerusalem (already annexed in violation of Security Council orders) and any other territories that Israel finds valuable, while excluding areas of heavy Palestinian population concentration and slowly removing Palestinians within the areas scheduled for incorporation within Greater Israel. As in neo-colonies generally, Palestinian elites will be able to enjoy western standards in Ramallah, with “90 per cent of the population of the West Bank living in 165 separate ‘islands,’ ostensibly under the control of the [Palestinian Authority]” but actual Israeli control, as reported by Nathan Thrall, senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.Gaza will remain under crushing siege, separated from the West Bank in violation of the Oslo Accords.

The third alternative is another piece of the “reality” described by David Gardner.

In an interesting and revealing comment, Netanyahu denounced the “gang-up” of the world as proof of “old-world bias against Israel,” a phrase reminiscent of Donald Rumsfeld’s Old Europe-New Europe distinction in 2003.

It will be recalled that the states of Old Europe were the bad guys, the major states of Europe, which dared to respect the opinions of the overwhelming majority of their populations and thus refused to join the US in the crime of the century, the invasion of Iraq. The states of New Europe were the good guys, which overruled an even larger majority and obeyed the master. The most honorable of the good guys was Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar, who rejected virtually unanimous opposition to the war in Spain and was rewarded by being invited to join Bush and Blair in announcing the invasion.

This quite illuminating display of utter contempt for democracy, along with others like it at the same time, passed virtually unnoticed, understandably. The task at the time was to praise Washington for its passionate dedication to democracy, as illustrated by “democracy promotion” in Iraq, which suddenly became the party line after the “single question” (will Saddam give up his WMD?) was answered the wrong way.

Netanyahu is adopting much the same stance. The old world that is biased against Israel is the entire UN Security Council; more specifically, anyone in the world who has some lingering commitment to international law and human rights. Luckily for the Israeli far right, that excludes the US Congress and — very forcefully — the president-elect and his associates.

The Israeli government is, of course, cognizant of these developments. It is therefore seeking to shift its base of support to authoritarian states, such as Singapore, China and Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist India, now becoming a very natural ally with its drift toward ultranationalism, reactionary internal policies and hatred of Islam. The reasons for Israel’s looking in this direction for support are outlined by Mark Heller, principal research associate at Tel Aviv’s Institution for National Security Studies. “Over the long term,” he explains, “there are problems for Israel in its relations with Western Europe and with the U.S.,” while in contrast, the important Asian countries “don’t seem to indicate much interest about how Israel gets along with the Palestinians, Arabs, or anyone else.” In short, China, India, Singapore and other favored allies are less influenced by the kinds of liberal and humane concerns that pose increasing threats to Israel.

C.J. Polychroniou: Are we then in the midst of new trends and tendencies in world order?

Noam Chomsky: I believe so, and the tendencies developing in world order merit some attention. As noted, the US is becoming even more isolated than it has been in recent years, when US-run polls — unreported in the US but surely known in Washington — revealed that world opinion regarded the US as by far the leading threat to world peace, no one else even close. Under Obama, the US is now alone in abstention on the illegal Israel settlements, against an otherwise unanimous Security Council. With President Trump joining his bipartisan congressional supporters on this issue, the US will be even more isolated in the world in support of Israeli crimes.

Since November 8, the US is isolated on the crucial matter of global warming, a threat to the survival of organized human life in anything like its present form. If Trump makes good on his promise to exit from the Iran deal, it is likely that the other participants will persist, leaving the US still more isolated from Europe.

The US is also much more isolated from its Latin American “backyard” than in the past, and will be even more isolated if Trump backs off from Obama’s halting steps to normalize relations with Cuba, undertaken to ward off the likelihood that the US would be pretty much excluded from hemispheric organizations because of its continuing assault on Cuba, in international isolation.

Much the same is happening in Asia, as even close US allies (apart from Japan) — and even the UK — flock to the China-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the China-based Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, in this case including Japan. The China-based Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) incorporates the Central Asian states, Siberia with its rich resources, India, Pakistan and soon, probably Iran, and perhaps Turkey. The SCO has rejected the US request for observer status and demanded that the US remove all military bases from the region.

Immediately after the Trump election, we witnessed the intriguing spectacle of German chancellor Angela Merkel taking the lead in lecturing Washington on liberal values and human rights. Meanwhile, since November 8, the world looks to China for leadership in saving the world from environmental catastrophe, while the US, in splendid isolation once again, devotes itself to undermining these efforts.

US isolation is not complete, of course. As was made very clear in the reaction to Trump’s electoral victory, the US has the enthusiastic support of the xenophobic ultraright in Europe, including its neofascist elements. The return of the right in parts of Latin America offers the US opportunities for alliances there as well. And the US retains its close alliance with the dictatorships of the Gulf and Egypt, and with Israel, which is also separating itself from more liberal and democratic sectors in Europe and linking with authoritarian regimes that are not concerned with Israel’s violations of international law and harsh attacks on elementary human rights.

The developing picture suggests the emergence of a New World Order, one that is rather different from the usual portrayals within the doctrinal system.

The above article text can also be accessed here.

The post 2011 Laureate Noam Chomsky on Donald Trump: how we got here, and what now? appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

2016 Laureate Naomi Klein on Trump: What’s really going on, and how can we resist?

Sydney Peace Foundation — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 03:26:22 +0000

Naomi Klein has written a two powerful pieces analysing the flurry of executive orders which have been trucked through by President Trump since his inauguration last month.

Klein urges us to see beyond the policies to the administration’s motivation: to create crises in order to exploit American citizen’s collective confusion for personal economic gain. She poses the question how will this administration exploit the crises that will happen under their watch?

The following two articles, “Trump’s Crony Cabinet May Look Strong, but They Are Scared” and “Get Ready for the First Shocks of Trump’s Disaster Capitalism” offer a concise explanation of Klein’s view on what’s actually going on in Washington, and what we can do about it.

Trump’s Crony Cabinet May Look Strong, but They Are Scared

Written by Naomi Klein, first published in The Nation on January 26, 2017

Let’s zoom out and recognize what is happening in Washington right now. The people who already possess an absolutely obscene share of the planet’s wealth, and whose share grows greater year after year—at last count, eight men own as much as half the world—are determined to grab still more. The key figures populating Donald Trump’s cabinet are not only ultra-rich—they are individuals who made their money knowingly causing harm to the most vulnerable people on this planet, and to the planet itself. It appears to be some sort of job requirement.

This article is adapted from several speeches given over Inauguration weekend.

There’s junk-banker Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary, whose lawless “foreclosure machine” kicked tens of thousands of people out of their homes.

And from junk mortgages to junk food, there’s Trump’s pick for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder. As CEO of his fast-food empire, it wasn’t enough to pay workers an abusive, non-livable wage. Several lawsuits also accuse his company of stealing workers’ wages by failing to pay for their labor and overtime.

And moving from junk food to junk science, there is Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. As an executive and then CEO of Exxon, his company bankrolled and amplified garbage science and lobbied fiercely against meaningful international climate action behind the scenes. In no small part because of these efforts, the world lost decades when we should have been kicking our fossil-fuel habit, and instead vastly accelerated the climate crisis. Because of these choices, countless people on this planet are already losing their homes to storms and rising seas, already losing their lives in heat waves and droughts, and millions will ultimately see their homelands disappear beneath the waves. As usual, the people impacted worst and first are the poorest, overwhelmingly black and brown.

Stolen homes. Stolen wages. Stolen cultures and countries. All immoral. All extremely profitable.

But the popular backlash was mounting. Which is precisely why this gang of CEOs—and the sectors they come from—were rightly worried that the party coming to end. They were scared. Bankers like Mnuchin remember the 2008 financial collapse and the open talk of bank nationalization. They witnessed the rise of Occupy and then the resonance of Bernie Sanders’s anti-bank message on the campaign trail.

Service sector bosses like Andrew Puzder are terrified of the rising power of the Fight for $15, which has been winning victories in cities and states across the country. And had Bernie won what was a surprisingly close primary, the campaign could well have had a champion in the White House. Imagine how frightening this is to a sector that relies on workplace exploitation so centrally to keep prices down and profits up.

And no one has more reason to fear ascendant social movements than Tillerson. Because of the rising power of the global climate movement, Exxon is under fire on every front. Pipelines carrying its oil are being blocked not just in the United States but around the world. Divestment campaigns are spreading like wildfire, causing market uncertainty. And over the past year, Exxon’s various deceptions came under investigation by the SEC and multiple state attorneys general. Make no mistake: The threat to Exxon posed by climate action is existential. The temperature targets in the Paris climate deal are wholly incompatible with burning the carbon companies like Exxon have in their reserves, the source of their market valuation. That’s why Exxon’s own shareholders were asking increasingly tough questions about whether they were on the verge of being stuck with a whole bunch of useless assets.

This is the backdrop for Trump’s rise to power—our movements were starting to win. I’m not saying that they were strong enough. They weren’t. I’m not saying we were united enough. We weren’t. But something was most definitely shifting. And rather than risk the possibility of further progress, this gang of fossil-fuel mouthpieces, junk-food peddlers, and predatory lenders have come together to take over the government and protect their ill-gotten wealth.
Let us be clear: This is not a peaceful transition of power. It’s a corporate takeover. The interests that have long-since paid off both major parties to do their bidding have decided they are tired of playing the game. Apparently, all that wining and dining of politicians, all that cajoling and legalized bribery, insulted their sense of divine entitlement.

So now they are cutting out the middleman and doing what every top dog does when they want something done right—they are doing it themselves. Exxon for secretary of state. Hardee’s for secretary of labor. General Dynamics for secretary of defense. And the Goldman guys for pretty much everything that’s left. After decades of privatizing the state in bits and pieces, they decided to just go for the government itself. Neoliberalism’s final frontier. That’s why Trump and his appointees are laughing at the feeble objections over conflicts of interest—the whole thing is a conflict of interest, that’s the whole point.

So what do we do about it? First, we always remember their weaknesses, even as they exercise raw power. The reason the mask has fallen off, and we now are witnessing undisguised corporate rule is not because these corporations felt all-powerful; it’s because they were panicked.

Moreover, a majority of Americans did not vote for Trump. Forty percent stayed home, and of the people who voted a clear majority voted for Hillary Clinton. He won within a very rigged system. Even within this system, he didn’t win it, Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment lost it. Trump didn’t win with overwhelming excitement and big numbers. He won because Hillary had depressed numbers and a lack of enthusiasm. The Democratic Party establishment did not think campaigning on tangible improvements to people’s lives was important. They had virtually nothing to offer to people whose lives have been decimated by neoliberal attacks. They thought they could run on fear of Trump, and it didn’t work.

Here’s the good news: All this makes Donald Trump incredibly vulnerable. This is the guy who came to power telling the boldest and brashest of lies, selling himself as a champion of the working man who would finally stand up to corporate power and influence in Washington. A portion of his base already has buyer’s remorse, and that portion is just going to grow.

Something else we have going for us? This administration is going to come after everyone at once. There are reports of a shock-and-awe budget that will cut $10 trillion over 10 years, taking a chainsaw to everything from violence-against-women programs, to arts programs, to supports for renewable energy, to community policing. It’s clear that they think this blitzkrieg strategy will overwhelm us. But they may be surprised—it could well unite us in common cause. And if the scale of the women’s marches is any indication, we are off to a good start.

Building sturdy coalitions in a time of siloed politics is hard work. There are painful histories that have to be confronted before progress is possible. And foundation funding and activist celebrity culture tend to pit people and movements against one another rather than encourage collaboration. Yet the difficulties cannot give way to despair. To quote a popular saying on the French left, “The hour calls for optimism; we’ll save pessimism for better times”. (“L’heure est à l’optimisme, laissons le pessimisme pour des temps meilleurs.”)

Personally, I can’t quite muster optimism. But in this moment when everything is on the line, we can, and we must, locate our most unshakable resolve.

Get Ready for the First Shocks of Trump’s Disaster Capitalism

Written by Naomi Klein, first published in The Intercept on January 25, 2017

Naomi Klein explains how the Trump administration might take advantage of coming crises to Jeremy Scahill at the Women’s March, Jan. 21, 2017.

Speculation is unnecessary. All that’s required is a little knowledge of recent history. Ten years ago, I published “The Shock Doctrine,” a history of the ways in which crises have been systematically exploited over the last half century to further a radical pro-corporate agenda. The book begins and ends with the response to Hurricane Katrina, because it stands as such a harrowing blueprint for disaster capitalism.

That’s relevant because of the central, if little-recalled role played by the man who is now the U.S. vice president, Mike Pence. At the time Katrina hit New Orleans, Pence was chairman of the powerful and highly ideological Republican Study Committee. On September 13, 2005 — just 14 days after the levees were breached and with parts of New Orleans still underwater — the RSC convened a fateful meeting at the offices of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Under Pence’s leadership, the group came up with a list of “Pro-Free-Market Ideas for Responding to Hurricane Katrina and High Gas Prices” — 32 policies in all, each one straight out of the disaster capitalism playbook.

Vehicles form a line at an Exxon gas station off of Interstate 55 in Jackson, Miss., Aug. 30, 2005. The station was one of the few in the city with both power and gas one day after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. Photo: Rick Guy/The Calrion Ledger/AP

To get a sense of how the Trump administration will respond to its first crises, it’s worth reading the list in full (and noting Pence’s name right at the bottom).

What stands out in the package of pseudo “relief” policies is the commitment to wage all-out war on labor standards and on the public sphere — which is ironic because the failure of public infrastructure is what turned Katrina into a human catastrophe. Also notable is the determination to use any opportunity to strengthen the hand of the oil and gas industry.

The first three items on the RSC list are “automatically suspend Davis-Bacon prevailing wage laws in disaster areas,” a reference to the law that required federal contractors to pay a living wage; “make the entire affected area a flat-tax free-enterprise zone”; and “make the entire region an economic competitiveness zone (comprehensive tax incentives and waiving of regulations).”

Another demand called for giving parents vouchers to use at charter schools, a move perfectly in line with the vision held by Trump’s pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos.

All these measures were announced by President George W. Bush within the week. Under pressure, Bush was eventually forced to reinstate the labor standards, though they were largely ignored by contractors. There is every reason to believe this will be the model for the multibillion-dollar infrastructure investments Trump is using to court the labor movement. Repealing Davis-Bacon for those projects was reportedly already floated at Monday’s meeting with leaders of construction and building trade unions.

Back in 2005, the Republican Study Committee meeting produced more ideas that gained presidential support. Climate scientists have directly linked the increased intensity of hurricanes to warming ocean temperatures. This connection, however, didn’t stop Pence and the RSC from calling on Congress to repeal environmental regulations on the Gulf Coast, give permission for new oil refineries in the United States, and to greenlight “drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.”

All these measures are a surefire way to drive up greenhouse gas emissions, the major human contributor to climate change, yet they were immediately championed by the president under the guise of responding to a devastating storm.

The oil industry wasn’t the only one to profit from Hurricane Katrina, of course. So did a slew of well-connected contractors, who turned the Gulf Coast into a laboratory for privatized disaster response.

The companies that snatched up the biggest contracts were the familiar gang from the invasion of Iraq: Halliburton’s KBR unit won a $60 million gig to reconstruct military bases along the coast. Blackwater was hired to protect FEMA employees from looters. Parsons, infamous for its sloppy Iraq work, was brought in for a major bridge construction project in Mississippi. Fluor, Shaw, Bechtel, CH2M Hill — all top contractors in Iraq — were hired by the government to provide mobile homes to evacuees just 10 days after the levees broke. Their contracts ended up totaling $3.4 billion, no open bidding required.

And no opportunity for profit was left untapped. Kenyon, a division of the mega funeral conglomerate Service Corporation International (a major Bush campaign donor), was hired to retrieve the dead from homes and streets. The work was extraordinarily slow, and bodies were left in the broiling sun for days. Emergency workers and local volunteer morticians were forbidden to step in to help because handling the bodies impinged on Kenyon’s commercial territory.

And as with so many of Trump’s decisions so far, relevant experience often appeared to have nothing to do with how contracts were allocated. AshBritt, a company paid half a billion dollars to remove debris, reportedly didn’t own a single dump truck and farmed out the entire job to contractors.

People wait for assistance after being rescued from their homes a day earlier in the Ninth Ward as a small fire burns after Hurricane Katrina, Aug. 31, 2005, in New Orleans.

Even more striking was the company that FEMA paid $5.2 million to perform the crucial role of building a base camp for emergency workers in St. Bernard Parish, a suburb of New Orleans. The camp construction fell behind schedule and was never completed. When the contractor was investigated, it emerged that the company, Lighthouse Disaster Relief, was actually a religious group. “About the closest thing I have done to this is just organize a youth camp with my church,” confessed Lighthouse’s director, Pastor Gary Heldreth.

After all the layers of subcontractors had taken their cut, there was next to nothing left for the people doing the work. For instance, the author Mike Davis tracked the way FEMA paid Shaw $175 a square foot to install blue tarps on damaged roofs, even though the tarps themselves were provided by the government. Once all the subcontractors took their share, the workers who actually hammered in the tarps were paid as little as $2 a square foot. “Every level of the contracting food chain, in other words, is grotesquely overfed except the bottom rung,” Davis wrote, “where the actual work is carried out.”

In Mississippi, a class-action lawsuit forced several companies to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back wages to immigrant workers. Some were not paid at all. On one Halliburton/KBR job site, undocumented immigrant workers reported being wakened in the middle of the night by their employer (a sub-subcontractor), who allegedly told them that immigration agents were on their way. Most workers fled to avoid arrest.

This corruption and abuse is particularly relevant because of Trump’s stated plan to contract out much of his infrastructure spending to private players in so-called public-private partnerships.

In the Katrina aftermath, the attacks on vulnerable people, carried out in the name of reconstruction and relief, did not stop there. In order to offset the tens of billions going to private companies in contracts and tax breaks, in November 2005 the Republican-controlled Congress announced that it needed to cut $40 billion from the federal budget. Among the programs that were slashed were student loans, Medicaid, and food stamps. In other words, the poorest people in the United States subsidized the contractor bonanza twice: first, when Katrina relief morphed into unregulated corporate handouts, providing neither decent jobs nor functional public services; and, second, when the few programs that directly assist the unemployed and working poor nationwide were gutted to pay those bloated bills.

Jenny Bullard carries a pair of boots from her home, which was damaged by a tornado, Jan. 22, 2017, in Adel, Ga. Photo: Branden Camp/AP

This is the disaster capitalism blueprint, and it aligns with Trump’s own track record as a businessman all too well.

Trump and Pence come to power at a time when these kinds of disasters, like the lethal tornadoes that just struck the southeastern United States, are coming fast and furious. Trump has already declared the U.S. a rolling disaster zone. And the shocks will keep getting bigger, thanks to the reckless policies that have already been promised.

What Katrina tells us is that this administration will attempt to exploit each disaster for maximum gain. We’d better get ready.”

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